The Indian Memory Project

A friend in Bombay saw the recent post about the studio portrait cards I collect along my travels — I was just back from South Asia so it included some from India — and asked if I knew the Indian Memory Project, which is an effort to gather the oral history of the lives recorded in old photographs. This video gives some sense of their mission:

There are any number of countries for which this kind of project would be valuable — my beloved Arab Image Foundation might consider it, for example — but there are hardly any for which it is better suited than India, which has the crucial combination of an immensely human and eclectic culture as well as a long, rich history of photography and portraiture. The Indian Memory Project website is a trove of illuminating, gossipy history — check it out for yourself.

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Sean Rocha is a writer and photographer based in New York. He has lived in Hong Kong, Cairo and Paris and his work has appeared in the New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Slate, Le Monde d'Hermès, Condé Nast Traveler, and read more...